I'd recently been remembering three different distinctions that I have seen drawn to divide up philosophers, or types of philosophy, or thinkers more generally.

Isaiah Berlin wrote a famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, taking as his point of departure the aphorism "a fox knows many things, but the hedgehog one important thing." The thought is that thinkers tend to be divided into those who are absorbed by the multiplicity of things and others who focus more on a unifying idea. In the "hedgehog" category he places Plato, Pascal, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche, among others; in the "fox" category, Aristotle, Shakespeare, James Joyce, etc. Presumably this is a matter of style or form rather than content; that is, there is "one important thing" which Aquinas could tell you about unhesitatingly if you asked him, but Aquinas is a presumably a fox if anyone is. (Berlin's question in this essay was of how to categorize Tolstoy, whom he judged to be a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog.)

The next distinction I have in mind is supplied by P.F. Strawson, in the introduction to his book Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, and it is the distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics: "Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure." The distinction is one which could perhaps be extended beyond metaphysics: it is natural enough to distinguish descriptive and revisionary ethicists (where the former don't have to be entirely unprescriptive--but their prescriptions do not deviate so much from what is usually accepted, for some reasons relating to methodology--contrast, for instance, Mill with Bentham). (Strawson was writing an essay in descriptive metaphysics. His son Galen Strawson went on to be a revisionary metaphysician, defending, among other theses, panpsychism and hard determinism.) (Again, I think it more appropriate to take this as a question of style rather than content. The logical atomists may have described themselves as simply analyzing the typical forms of thought and expression, and would have said that to the extent that our thought is contentful, it is as they describe it. But in spirit, they are quite revisionary in holding, for instance, as Russell did, that only simples are truly named, and that the only true names are demonstratives.)

Finally, we are given the distinction between ordinary men's philosophers and philosophers' philosophers, in Elizabeth Anscombe's paper "Wittgenstein: Whose Philosopher?" The principal question is not of accessibility or of simplicity of expression; it is rather whether the questions which occupy the philosopher are those which have any pull with non-philosophers, or which would only interest philosophers. Her suggestion is that Plato is a philosophers' philosopher (reproducing, as he does, "arguments of the Sophists to prove that there cannot be such a thing as false belief, because what is false is not, and so he who thinks what is false thinks nothing, i.e. does not think anything) whereas Aristotle is an ordinary man's philosopher (tending to be absorbed by rather down-to-earth questions, taking off the table immediately such views as that weakness of will  is impossible).

It isn't easy in every case to place a given philosopher on one side of these distinctions or the other; and of course, there need not always be a clean way to do so, for it's possible to be both descriptive and revisionary on different topics or in different respects. But there are also other cases of indeterminacy which aren't just a case of a philosopher falling on both sides of a distinction.

One question is: Where does one place oneself among these distinctions? It's tough to say. I think it's easiest to say that I tend toward or aspire to being descriptive rather than revisionary, and probably toward being an ordinary man's philosopher. I am not sure I'm a sufficiently original thinker to be judged either a hedgehog or a fox, though I suppose I am less of a fox than I was years ago.

Another question is: Are these categories correlated? There's perhaps a tendency for ordinary men's philosophers to be descriptive, though the opposite doesn't have to hold if we are to accept Anscombe's assessment of the late Wittgenstein, who was certainly of a descriptive bent. (The early Wittgenstein of course was revisionary, but also a  philosophers' philosopher).

Another question is: Are there other distinctions, worth juxtaposing with these?

Last edited by Greg (2/02/2018 5:01 pm)